Earth Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

Series:

Elemental Logic #2

Publisher:

Tor

Copyright:

March 2004

Printing:

June 2005

ISBN:

0-7653-4838-1

Format:

Mass market

Pages:

436

Earth Logic is the second book in the Elemental Logic series,
following Fire Logic. It does not stand
on its own; it's a story continuation, makes repeated reference to events
from the previous book, and starts with the full cast of that book, with
very little explanation of what happened previously. Not only would I
recommend against reading it out of order, but I would also recommend
reading it close in temporal proximity to Fire Logic.

Sadly, I did not do this; I read it about four years later, and had
forgotten all of the characters and much of the plot. As a result, I
struggled through the first part of this book, trying to place the
characters and connect the dots of half-described previous events.
Sometimes this is fun; here, it was remarkably frustrating. While this is
partly my fault (I had both books and just didn't get around to reading
the second one), I have a long-standing plea for authors: please put a
summary of the previous books in the start of a multivolume epic! I truly
do not understand why people are so opposed to doing this, and instead
simply start subsequent books assuming the reader remembers, or awkwardly
mix a summary of events into the first few chapters. Both of these
alternatives are significantly inferior to a simple several-page summary
of the highlights of the previous volume at the start of the book. People
who don't like such things can skip it trivially, and it would have been a
huge help. I know it's hard to summarize a complex plot, but all I would
have needed were a few more jogs to my memory to make the start of this
book much more enjoyable.

Anyway, rant aside, this is a return to the land of Shaftal and the cast
built up by Fire Logic, particularly Karis and Zanja (although many
of the other characters play significant roles). It's a story of
continued resistance against the Sainnites; it's also the story of the
Sainnites themselves, who get a viewpoint character and who are in
possibly an even worse trap. And it's Karis's story, even more than
Fire Logic was, as one might expect from the title.

As with Fire Logic, the largest problem with this book is that it's
slow in places. This time, the slowness is mostly front-loaded: the story
starts out with matters in uneasy equilibrium and with the characters,
Karis in particular, very afraid of breaking that equilibrium. This is
tied deeply into a tension between Karis and Zanja, and between earth and
fire logic, that I never completely understood, and which therefore lacked
impact for me. The solutions the characters pursued were quite strange,
at least to me. In places, I had to just roll with it.

But once the story gets moving, about halfway or three-quarters through,
it turns into a deep meditation on the nature of societies and conflict,
pulling in attitudes towards violence that you don't get to see much in
traditional fantasy (particularly fantasy which, like this series, tends
towards the military and martial). This clearly works in this world in
ways that it couldn't in ours, but those ways are themselves fascinating.
Karis is a wonderful character in large part due to her attitude towards
power. And the book as a whole I think captures a piece of "earth logic":
slowly accumulating weight until it reaches a tipping point, and falling
in an inexorable landslide of motion towards a surprising conclusion. The
interleaved Sainnite perspective added tremendously to the story and gave
the reader an inside look at the sort of transformation that slowly built
up through the novel.

I think my favorite part of Marks's world of Shaftal is its much broader
understanding of family and how people interact with those families. The
main characters serve as one example from the start, but there are several
other important ones, including some sharp contrasts with the life of the
Sainnites. It's such an open, welcoming, and sensible way of going about
family and interpersonal relationships, but it's rare to see the
implications chased as completely as they are here. It also helps that
Karis is an absolute delight, incorporates many key aspects of that
understanding of life, and is persistently herself even in the middle of a
protracted civil war.

Earth Logic clearly doesn't complete this series, but it moves the
world to a new place and provides a satisfying conclusion to the problems
it tackles. It's slow to start, and frustrating if you don't remember the
previous book well, but it's very much worth the read. There are moments
in it that are purely delightful, and I loved the ending. It also has a
marvellous cover that captures Karis extremely well.